Managers’ salaries go up at City Hall

Top managers get more responsibility and pay

CHULA VISTA  The retirement of Chula Vista’s assistant city manager in February brought about a wave of change in City Hall that may be a harbinger of what is to come for city employees: Higher expectations, and higher salaries to go with them.

City Manager Jim Sandoval lobbied successfully to restructure his managerial staff after Scott Tulloch left, which meant some people – new Deputy City Manager Kelly Bacon, for example – took on more responsibilities, but also got pay increases to go with them.

Nobody was hired to step right into Tulloch’s shoes. Instead, most of the top-level managers’ roles are taking a different shape, as U-T San Diego reported in its Jan. 16 story about Bacon’s new role, along with the revised responsibilities for Assistant City Manager Gary Halbert.

Bacon will get a $20,000 boost in pay, from about $158,000 to $179,000 annually, while Halbert is to receive a $9,500 increase, to $204,600.

They weren’t the only two to get new job descriptions and paychecks, though. Irene Moseley was promoted from human resources operations manager to assistant director of human resources, with a $26,300 raise, and Herman Howell moved up from IT manager to assistant director of informational technology services, which comes with a $19,600 bump in pay.

Former Housing Manager Mandy Mills’ job title changed to assistant to the city manager/continuous improvement manager, but her salary stayed the same.

Overall, the structural changes did not impact the city budget, because the salary boosts were revenue-neutral, coming out of what Tulloch used to earn.

The restructuring among the managers is another step toward what City Manager Sandoval describes as “a lean, highly skilled, performance-based, accountable and customer service-oriented staff that is compensated accordingly,” he explained at a recent City Council workshop.

Sandoval said he plans to share a new compensation plan with the council in March that will reflect that goal.

“We want to be like a high-performing business,” he said. “Our business has a lot of constraints.... Those things we look at as challenges, but they’re not something we can’t overcome together and have a really highly productive workforce.”